September 22, 2025 • 26 mins
A surreal sci-fi series exploring speculative concepts, dreams, and philosophical what-ifs. Each episode is a cerebral journey into the mind’s deepest questions.
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Speaker 1 (00:37):
Mind Welcome to a.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Half hour of mind wag Short stories from the World
of spect section. This story comes from the Magazine of
Fantasy and Science Fiction, August nineteen sixty two. The title
is the Top and it's written by George Sumner LB.
(01:25):
Nine oh seven am to Jonathan Gerber from l Lester Leith,
read the pale green memorandum slip on the desk, kindly
save your day for me. Attached as an elevator pass
for your permanent possession. Soest you visit thirteenth floor this morning,
but no higher LLL so after all these years, said
Jonathan to himself as he drew the pass, the first
(01:47):
he'd ever actually touched from its classing end vote. It was,
of course, a miniature pyramid. One metal surface bore the
firm name allied the other photo engraving of his Jonathan's
own head and shoulders where he'd been photographed. He had
no idea recently it must have been, for he was
wearing a tie he had just bought. Evidently, the company
police had caught him with a fast lens as he
(02:09):
entered or left the building. Miskind hands. He spoke to
his secretary over the intercom cancel my appointments. Mister Leith
wants me to stand by the golden pyramid in his hand,
he strode down the lustrous corridor to the elevator Bank thirteen.
The elevator operator, though he had known his face and
his fuzzy hair's tweed suit for years, faltered in alarm.
(02:32):
Ah it's all right, Jonathan assured him. Turned over his
hand to show the past. Ah sure, said the man,
and he breathed the two words as a musician might breathe,
two soft, low notes on the flute. And then he
came to attention, shut the bronze door, and pushed his button.
Fourteen years or or is it sixteen? Murmured Jonathan to himself,
and descended, even as the elevator carried him upward in
(02:55):
power and prestige, through the tears of memory, to his
first days in the building, he recalled, smiling. Now, he
had had his doubts about the elevators, as morning after
morning they had lifted in to the advertising department on
the eighth floor. He had felt, against all reason, that
there was trickery, that he was being carried not up,
but down, down, down into catacombs beneath Allied's gigantic pyramid.
(03:17):
The little electric bulbs in the car, blinking one and
two and three had not convinced him that he was
traveling upward. The motion was so smooth nothing could be felt.
When the noiseless door opened, nobody could have said where
he was. Long empty corridors, narrow as the galleries of
a mine, stretched away without end, their plastic panels gleaming
(03:38):
under the light from squares of miat glass in the ceiling.
There were no windows anywhere in the building, and the
radiance entering through the glass brick might have come from
deftly concealed electric lamps. There was nothing to prove it
was daylight. Fantasy. Jonathan had rebuked himself, fantasy. I am lucky,
phenomenally lucky here I am only twenty seven at Allied.
(03:59):
Anybody else give his eye teeth to be where I am.
Nowadays he used colloquibialisms to capture more readers for his ads,
but in the past he had used them innocently for pleasure.
He had been a copywriter in the New York advertising
agency when one afternoon the firm senior partners had called
him in and told him that the almost legendary firm
in Minnesota wanted to hire him. If Jonathan refused them.
(04:23):
Paltry gift of himself had been made clear the agency
might henceforth find it embarrassing to employ him, and so
might other agencies. So, feeling like an Aztec youth chosen
for the stone altar, honored but doubtful, he had taken
the train for Minnesota, finding chocolates and Crimson roses in
the state room. Oh, there had been qualms, Nor had
(04:44):
his first impression of el Lester Leith been reassuring. Leith's
sound proof office, with its pale gray paint and pale
gray furniture, its class brick glowing with a dim light
that might be sunshine and might not have been, rather
like a bank of fog, and it had been difficult
to tell where the fog left off and Leith himself began.
(05:05):
His face was the color of mist, his hair might
have been aluminium, on which moisture had condensed. His white
fingers had moved across his desk like small raiths, while
his voice said the soft, mournful boom of a deep
toned steamer whistle heard across miles of veiled sea. It
had taken Jonathan a while to become accustomed to Leith's
(05:26):
voice and its miracles of misty circumlocution. What will my
job be? He had asked, and Leith had replied that
jobs were further lully and words were not to be
used inaccurately. I mean, what will my work be? Jonathan
had cracked himself, and Leith had answered, work, Ah, work.
(05:48):
It was was work which made the fathers of our
nation giants on the land. It was work which made
America what it is to day, the light and beacon
of a troubled world. People have grown soft. They ask
for security. Are the best security? The only security is work.
A third time, Jonathan had tried in. Leaf had said,
(06:10):
what products will you advertise? My boy, Allied has no products.
Let us say rather that Allied creates and develops semi
finished materials which enable small manufacturers under the free enterprise
system to enrich or otherwise improve certain items for the
ultimate benefit of the consumer. Mister and missus America, your
(06:32):
subject will be Allied itself. I have brought you to
us because while you have a nice flair for words,
I was deeply stirred by your headline for the shotgunad,
A lad and his dog. And the little piece you
wrote for the diaper people. What did you call it? Ah? Yes,
babies are fallen stars. Just give me words like that
(06:55):
for Allied, my boy, Give me patriotism, friendship, nobility, the love. Thus,
fourteen years ago, could it be sixteen? Could it be seventeen?
Jonathan had begun his task of writing for millions of
newspaper readers little essays without subjects. When his first institutional
(07:15):
copy appeared in print, he had feared that people would laugh,
But nobody had laughed. On the contrary, letters of praise
had come in from every corner of the country. His ad,
which listed George Washington's virtues and named Allied as their
modern inheritor, had won the National Advertising Council's Platinum and
Ruby Metal. His ad stating that Allied conducted its business
(07:36):
affairs according to precepts learned from a toil worn mother's
lips by honesty. B. Lincoln had been singled out for
a special scroll by the Junior Chamber of Commerce. Ever
since he had been writing such pieces, with their growing
appreciation of their worth, eloquence and dignity. And meanwhile, al
luster Leith had shown him only admiration and kindliness. An
(07:56):
allied had raised his salary from ten thousand dollars a
year to seven eighteen five, and from seventeen five to
twenty three to two. Each year. He was awarded, in addition,
the bonus of Class C preferred stock, which he would
forfeit only if he left the company before retirement age.
He was expected on the thirteenth floor. A burly young
guard in the gray uniform no doubt a recruit from
(08:18):
the college football squad, saluted him. Mister Gerber, I'm gonna
show you anything you want to see around here. I
really don't know what I want to see. I'm afraid
this is my first visit. Oh, mister Lee said, you
might like me to introduce you to a divisional manager. Sir, well,
and let's do that by all means. The guard marched ahead,
opening bronze doors in fifteen divisional office suites. Jonathan shook
(08:40):
hands with eight ball thin men and seven balld fat men.
And these were not the directors. These were merely the
decision and risk takers, devoted family men who were paid
one hundred thousand dollars a year and died early of
coronary attacks. Jonathan inspected their graft room, their elaborate communications room,
their restaurant, their small three bed hospital. I see the
(09:01):
hospital has its own elevator, he observed to the guard.
If a man dies at his desk, you can get
him out of the building without anybody getting so much
as a peak at him. Of the planning board doors
will slip up on the many to tell sir. And Jonathan,
in his fourth or fifty year with the company, had
had a personal encounter with a large precision technique for
just such fatalities. One day in the elevator, and engineer
(09:24):
named Jack said pale, the gasp and fallen, and while
Jonathan knelt over him, the operator had stopped the car
between floors, telephoning calmly to the starter in the lobby
for instructions, and the cage had dropped fast and deep
into the cellars, and guards with a stretcher had met it,
and Jonathan had said, I'm afraid he's dead, and the
chief guard had replied, oh no, sir, he's faint, that
(09:45):
that's all, or else he's indisposed. Ere going to get
him to a doctor, And the chief would have just
stepped back into the car, sir. That had been all
there was to it. Later, Jonathan had been unable to
pry an unequivocal answer from the elevator operator, from the guards,
or from anybody. On the obituary page of the newspaper
on the third day, there'd been a brief paragraph to
the effect that one D. M. Jack's engineer of this
(10:07):
city had passed away, but not so much as a
word had indicated that the man worked for Allied Jax
had simply disappeared. The company did not ignore death. It
bypassed it. When a man died, his assistant took his place.
In the corporation with tens of thousands of employees, somebody
was bonded I every day and work couldn't be repeatedly interrupted.
(10:31):
Back once more on his own floor, as Jonathan put
his head into Leif's handsomely decorated antewoom and said, if.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
He wants me and back, the doctor's with him now.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Said Miss Tablin to Leif's confidential secretary, But stay near
your phone please. At his desk was nothing to do
but wait and stare at the reader acceptance grafts on
the wall. Jonathan asked himself, what could be in the
wind leif was anything but impulsive. The permanent Yes, the
visit to thirteen were in themselves of promotion. Nothing lay
(11:05):
above thirteen but fourteen, since nobody had always permitted to
go up to fifteen, where the President's wheat filled the
pyramid's tip. Was he? Jonathan wondered actually to join the
planning board. He could rise no higher in the advertising
department without taking Leith's own job. Well, he would have
(11:25):
the answer soon enough, he told himself, whatever it might be.
With a shrug, he took the pass from his pocket,
scrutinized his likeness on it, and laughed. Gone, gone with
the waxen curls of youth. In reminiscent sentimental mood, he
tried to recall how he had looked at twenty seven.
He couldn't manage it. But I do remember, he said
to himself, with a smile. I do remember that I
(11:47):
was skeptical. Oh was I skeptical? He had, he remembered,
in a suspicion of the elevators, actually paced off the
corridors to make sure the lower floors of the pyramid
were broader than the upper. In fact, he had done
worse than that he had played truant from his desk
to explore the cellar's, finding, of course, nothing evil, finding
nothing at all, then, Jonathan recalled, smiling, having learned what
(12:12):
he could about the building. He had tried to discover
what Allied's products were flair for words or not. It
seemed absurd to him at first to write ads without
knowing what they were about, and he had been able
to learn a little. He had found, for example, that
the company's four thousand products bore alphabetic names ranging from
ab AaB an adulterant from milkshakes to ziz z yz,
(12:36):
which were rots for tractor magnetos. But his collection of
obs and zizz's had soon bored him. The buzzer on
his desk, tuned to G sharp, sounded with the dexterity
of practice. Jonathan lifted his telephone from its cradle and
perched it like a parakeet on his shoulder. Gerber. Here
it was Leith's secretary.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
And the doctor is still with him. His ulsters must
have been usually bad this morning, or maybe he's been hearing
the ticking again. But I have some instructions for you. Kindly,
happier lunch, make a tour of fourteen at one o'clock
and report back here at two.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
What's cooking, missus Tabline? Jonathan asked her the secretary's regard
to slang's evidence of democracy and passed the word around it.
You were adorable if you used it. A girl worked
away her fingernails in her youth for a boss who
was sufficiently adorable.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
I don't know. It must be important, though, a major project.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I eat my lunch at twelve with the junior executive group.
You know, the directors don't go out to lunch till
at quarter past one. If I go up to fourteen
while they're out, the place will be deserted. What does
he want me to do up there? Do you know?
Miss Tabline?
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Just look around? I guess I wish I was going
with you, mister Gerber. Promise me one thing, though, Promise
me when you get back, you'll tell me if mister
Waffin really has a gold plated toilet seat.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yes, yes, I will, promised Jonathan, but he knew he
wouldn't tell. He ate lunch with two of his assistants,
younger men still in their indoctrination period the grape Vine Telegraph.
He discovered to his amusement, had already tapped out the
news of his golden pass. The boys showed him scrubbed, bright,
eager faces, and arrived each time he opened his mouth
(14:17):
out of respect. Shortly after one, he rode up to
fourteen in the elevator. It was noticeably smaller than thirteen.
Evidently the stepped back was sharper than it appeared from
the street. Another guard, saluting, informed him that there were
eight directors offices and a conference room, and that he
was free to go anywhere he liked. And the guards
said they're worth seeing, sir, And they were. Several offices
(14:40):
had barber chairs, gigantic television receivers, and bars stocked with
private blends. One had a cigar humidor the size of
a bank vault, one a target range for air pistols,
one that finished saw the bath. The most interesting was
a room which duplicated the after deck of a cabin cruiser,
complete with angling chair and a rack for rods and word.
(15:01):
Not an assistant, not as secretary was to be seen,
not a memorandum as it created the rich polished wood
of the vast desks. Tell me, Jonathan said to the guard,
how often do these planning board men come in, and
the guard had replied, well, they're here for the annual meeting, sir.
Otherwise they come in only when mister Sathwaite sends for him.
(15:21):
I guess Hanscomb Ludlow's athterwait The second was Allied's president,
who had his suite in the point of the pyramid,
and a man who was photographed growing no older in
the photographs from year to year, but he was never seen.
Do any of them live in Minnesota? Forgive my curiosity,
this is my first visit. Well, sir, you're forgetting. They
(15:42):
all have planes and pilots nowadays, like mister Eppingery. Now
he's got four hundred thousand acres in Louisiana. He keeps
where they're shrimping, so he lives there. Mister Latchwell owns
an island off the coast of Mexico. He's got a
castle and a little army. That's why he wears his
red and blue uniforms and his leather boots with his
stars on him. I've seen mister Latchwell on the elevators.
Of course, Jonathan, at one time or another had glimpsed
(16:05):
most of the portly imposing directors. There was one, undoubtedly
the fisherman, who wore white canvas trousers and a white
cap with a green saluloid bill. Another went bare toad
and raw height sandals for his health. There was method
behind their little eccentricities. Of course, they put them on
as a demonstration of equality, his wise old Leaf had
(16:25):
patiently explained to him more than once. Thanking the guard,
Jonathan went down again. It's one fifty five, he said,
putting his bald head into leaf sandy room. Miss Tabline,
peering over her glasses, said, oh, come in and wait here.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Oh, oh, tell me, tell me, you must tell me.
Is it really?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Our directors work much too hard, Miss Tabline for any
such nonsense. But of course I understand you were just
having a little fun.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
Oh I I did so want to know.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Was Miss Tabline's loyalty questionable? She might just possibly say.
Jonathan to himself proved to be a dangerous fellow worker.
He read, dear folks, the Allied House organ until the
signal lamp flashed, and this Tabline said he might go in.
Good news are bad, and he scarcely saw how it
could be bad. He would have it.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Now well good afternoon, my son.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Said, al Leicester leaf. His face was as white as
a sheet of the gha the company manufactured as an
intermediate for the jenifice industry, smudged with shadow. One corner
of his mouth sagged. His left eye was an owl's pupil,
enormous and fierce. Jonathan was shocked and said, Lester, Lester,
you're ill. I'm not ill.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
I'm dying. I'll diet my est this afternoon. Robably within
the next five or ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
He let me, let me drive you home.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
No, no, I want it this way.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
I want my.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
Death as well as my life, to be a demonstration
service allied.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
And all that it stands for. Ah, but time is short,
my son.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
Tomorrow morning and inter office memo form one one for
be blue.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
He will announce that you are succeeding me as chief.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Of the department.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
You're started fifty thousand, your stock bonus will be comparable.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Thank you, Lester.
Speaker 5 (18:29):
Your your first active office, Jonathan, I hope will be
to hire and assistant to Blazes with.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Our sacred fire.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
I suggest that you you do what I did, comb
the agencies for a young Jonathan Gerber and train him
as for twenty one years I have trained you.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
It was a gray afternoon. No sunlight at all was
filtering through the glass brick. The room, it seemed to Jonathan,
was crowded with bars of fog lying one on top
of another, like two by twelve stacked in a lumber
yard in bimness, in shimmering shadow. El Lester. Leith's face
came and went an image floating free in space, bobbling
(19:15):
lazily like a barrel and a foggy sea. It's been
such a joy to serve ally that I haven't counted
the years, said Jonathan. He had learned well. Such pronouncements
were now effortless for him. But it was a bit
of a blow. Nevertheless, has it really been so long?
(19:35):
Has my son and I know I leave the.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Department in good hands?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Did you go up to thirteen? Yes? Of course, fourteen?
Of course it was it was your order. Leith swayed
with an effort. He gathered together his failing.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
Energy, and he said, before for you take over, there's
one more thing, Jonathan, one final right you you must
meet our president. Go up to fifteen.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
He sagged on his executive's posture chair. Jonathan sprang forward.
Lester never so slowly. Leith raised a white forefinger towards
the ceiling. Fifteen, he whispered, and died tenderly. Jonathan closed
(20:34):
behind him the soundproof door that was now his own.
Miss tabline, Please call the janitor, mister Leath is no
longer with allied. Down the corridor at the elevator bank,
a car appeared. The instantly pressed the button, almost as
if news of his eminence had somehow traveled down the
dark shaft along the bell wire, and he directed the
(20:56):
operator brusquely the top. The little lamps blinked, the door
slid open. But I said I wanted the top, Jonathan
protested indignantly. He was the advertising manager. He earned fifteen
thousand dollars a year. His time was too valuable the
allied for him to permit a menual to waste it.
(21:17):
He said, this is fourteen, not fifteen. The operator said, sorry, sir,
this is as high as we will go. Speak to
the guard I will. Indeed, the guard was already at
his elbow, the same chap who had conducted him earlier.
What is this? What is this? I want? Fifteen? Dammit?
Oh quite quite right, sir. Over Here he led the
(21:39):
way to a plain bronze door with neither knob nor keyhole.
Just drop your pass into the slot, sir. It operates
an electrical circuit and opens the door. You do the
same thing on the other side when you come down.
You mean to say, mister Sathwaite walks this last flight
each time he comes here. Ah, well, I've never seen him, sir.
He must from coast to coast. Hundreds of Allied plants
(22:02):
were a hundred and ninety three thousand Allied fellow workers
were turning out four thousand products. Here at the center
of the country sat this colossal pyramid, which was the
center of the whole thing. Here on the topmost floor,
the pyramid clicked the mind, which, in its genius comprehended
and guided all. And here here was he, Jonathan Gerber,
(22:25):
about to shake the hand of supremacy. Eyes a light
shoulder squared, Jonathan dropped his pass into the thin slot,
walked through the door, and shut it after him. Facing
him was a simple staircase of painted steel with a
hand rail, climbing it past rough walls of orange hollow
(22:45):
tile which had not been plastered. He marveled, how fitting
that mister Satherway with his immeasurable power, should despise its trappings.
Many and many a time. In his writings, Jonathan had
said that Allied's president War was a simple man, and
as always, the fiction had created the fact. He was
(23:06):
at the top of the staircase. He stepped on to
a bare concrete floor, littered with scraps of building paper,
pots of dried paint, and dead flies. The air smelt
like a stilton cheese. Trying the door at his left,
he peered into a black cavern in which greased steel
elevator cables slipped over great spoked wheels. He tried a
(23:27):
door at his right, and gazed into another cavern exactly
like it for five minutes. For ten he stood in
the musty heat, turning slowly round and round, looking for
He knew not what a secret door, a cache of
blackboard on which his predecessors might have left, if nothing more,
at least their signatures. But he saw only the paint pots,
(23:51):
the flies, and four small windows, like round eyes, one
on each inward sloping wall. Cobwebs and grime covered the
windows here and there on them he saw the scurf
had been rubbed away as by a sleeved elbow. Stepping
to the nearest, he broadened the clear spot on it
and looked out. He saw a segment of the town
(24:13):
which might have been a ramshackle clutter of blackened boards,
and beyond that the endless plain of Minnesota. And he
saw something he had forgotten. That it was winter on
the prairie. Dry snow driven by the wind, smoked over
farm houses and fences. Where the land could be seen
at all, it was blue with cold, and more snow
(24:34):
was coming, and more cold. For it was true that
summer was a vacation and interlude. Winter was the reality,
the constant companion Winter lay, ever, a few miles to
the north, waiting to reclaim its property. Blue lay the earth,
veined with white like the deep sea, and the veins
(24:54):
were ice. Jonathan murmured and shivered, soap cold, so cold,
and slapping the dust from his warm, fuzzy tweed suit.
He summoned his raiment for his face, awe and dedication
in the proper proportions, and tramped down the staircase, his
heels ringing on the painted steel, bits of plastered, grittiest
(25:18):
sand beneath his soul, his hand all the way cherished
the safety rail, he warned himself cautiously. This would be
no time to slip and fall. No, no, I mustn't
slip now ah. The title of that story is The
(25:57):
Cot written by George Sumner Elber. It appeared in the
August nineteen sixty two edition of the Magazine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction. This is Michael Hanson speaking technical production
on mindwebs by Steve Gordon. Mindwebbs comes to you from
WYCHA Radio in Madison, a service of the University of
(26:17):
Wisconsin Extension
Mind Welcome to a.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Half hour of mind wag Short stories from the World
of spect section. This story comes from the Magazine of
Fantasy and Science Fiction, August nineteen sixty two. The title
is the Top and it's written by George Sumner LB.
(01:25):
Nine oh seven am to Jonathan Gerber from l Lester Leith,
read the pale green memorandum slip on the desk, kindly
save your day for me. Attached as an elevator pass
for your permanent possession. Soest you visit thirteenth floor this morning,
but no higher LLL so after all these years, said
Jonathan to himself as he drew the pass, the first
(01:47):
he'd ever actually touched from its classing end vote. It was,
of course, a miniature pyramid. One metal surface bore the
firm name allied the other photo engraving of his Jonathan's
own head and shoulders where he'd been photographed. He had
no idea recently it must have been, for he was
wearing a tie he had just bought. Evidently, the company
police had caught him with a fast lens as he
(02:09):
entered or left the building. Miskind hands. He spoke to
his secretary over the intercom cancel my appointments. Mister Leith
wants me to stand by the golden pyramid in his hand,
he strode down the lustrous corridor to the elevator Bank thirteen.
The elevator operator, though he had known his face and
his fuzzy hair's tweed suit for years, faltered in alarm.
(02:32):
Ah it's all right, Jonathan assured him. Turned over his
hand to show the past. Ah sure, said the man,
and he breathed the two words as a musician might breathe,
two soft, low notes on the flute. And then he
came to attention, shut the bronze door, and pushed his button.
Fourteen years or or is it sixteen? Murmured Jonathan to himself,
and descended, even as the elevator carried him upward in
(02:55):
power and prestige, through the tears of memory, to his
first days in the building, he recalled, smiling. Now, he
had had his doubts about the elevators, as morning after
morning they had lifted in to the advertising department on
the eighth floor. He had felt, against all reason, that
there was trickery, that he was being carried not up,
but down, down, down into catacombs beneath Allied's gigantic pyramid.
(03:17):
The little electric bulbs in the car, blinking one and
two and three had not convinced him that he was
traveling upward. The motion was so smooth nothing could be felt.
When the noiseless door opened, nobody could have said where
he was. Long empty corridors, narrow as the galleries of
a mine, stretched away without end, their plastic panels gleaming
(03:38):
under the light from squares of miat glass in the ceiling.
There were no windows anywhere in the building, and the
radiance entering through the glass brick might have come from
deftly concealed electric lamps. There was nothing to prove it
was daylight. Fantasy. Jonathan had rebuked himself, fantasy. I am lucky,
phenomenally lucky here I am only twenty seven at Allied.
(03:59):
Anybody else give his eye teeth to be where I am.
Nowadays he used colloquibialisms to capture more readers for his ads,
but in the past he had used them innocently for pleasure.
He had been a copywriter in the New York advertising
agency when one afternoon the firm senior partners had called
him in and told him that the almost legendary firm
in Minnesota wanted to hire him. If Jonathan refused them.
(04:23):
Paltry gift of himself had been made clear the agency
might henceforth find it embarrassing to employ him, and so
might other agencies. So, feeling like an Aztec youth chosen
for the stone altar, honored but doubtful, he had taken
the train for Minnesota, finding chocolates and Crimson roses in
the state room. Oh, there had been qualms, Nor had
(04:44):
his first impression of el Lester Leith been reassuring. Leith's
sound proof office, with its pale gray paint and pale
gray furniture, its class brick glowing with a dim light
that might be sunshine and might not have been, rather
like a bank of fog, and it had been difficult
to tell where the fog left off and Leith himself began.
(05:05):
His face was the color of mist, his hair might
have been aluminium, on which moisture had condensed. His white
fingers had moved across his desk like small raiths, while
his voice said the soft, mournful boom of a deep
toned steamer whistle heard across miles of veiled sea. It
had taken Jonathan a while to become accustomed to Leith's
(05:26):
voice and its miracles of misty circumlocution. What will my
job be? He had asked, and Leith had replied that
jobs were further lully and words were not to be
used inaccurately. I mean, what will my work be? Jonathan
had cracked himself, and Leith had answered, work, Ah, work.
(05:48):
It was was work which made the fathers of our
nation giants on the land. It was work which made
America what it is to day, the light and beacon
of a troubled world. People have grown soft. They ask
for security. Are the best security? The only security is work.
A third time, Jonathan had tried in. Leaf had said,
(06:10):
what products will you advertise? My boy, Allied has no products.
Let us say rather that Allied creates and develops semi
finished materials which enable small manufacturers under the free enterprise
system to enrich or otherwise improve certain items for the
ultimate benefit of the consumer. Mister and missus America, your
(06:32):
subject will be Allied itself. I have brought you to
us because while you have a nice flair for words,
I was deeply stirred by your headline for the shotgunad,
A lad and his dog. And the little piece you
wrote for the diaper people. What did you call it? Ah? Yes,
babies are fallen stars. Just give me words like that
(06:55):
for Allied, my boy, Give me patriotism, friendship, nobility, the love. Thus,
fourteen years ago, could it be sixteen? Could it be seventeen?
Jonathan had begun his task of writing for millions of
newspaper readers little essays without subjects. When his first institutional
(07:15):
copy appeared in print, he had feared that people would laugh,
But nobody had laughed. On the contrary, letters of praise
had come in from every corner of the country. His ad,
which listed George Washington's virtues and named Allied as their
modern inheritor, had won the National Advertising Council's Platinum and
Ruby Metal. His ad stating that Allied conducted its business
(07:36):
affairs according to precepts learned from a toil worn mother's
lips by honesty. B. Lincoln had been singled out for
a special scroll by the Junior Chamber of Commerce. Ever
since he had been writing such pieces, with their growing
appreciation of their worth, eloquence and dignity. And meanwhile, al
luster Leith had shown him only admiration and kindliness. An
(07:56):
allied had raised his salary from ten thousand dollars a
year to seven eighteen five, and from seventeen five to
twenty three to two. Each year. He was awarded, in addition,
the bonus of Class C preferred stock, which he would
forfeit only if he left the company before retirement age.
He was expected on the thirteenth floor. A burly young
guard in the gray uniform no doubt a recruit from
(08:18):
the college football squad, saluted him. Mister Gerber, I'm gonna
show you anything you want to see around here. I
really don't know what I want to see. I'm afraid
this is my first visit. Oh, mister Lee said, you
might like me to introduce you to a divisional manager. Sir, well,
and let's do that by all means. The guard marched ahead,
opening bronze doors in fifteen divisional office suites. Jonathan shook
(08:40):
hands with eight ball thin men and seven balld fat men.
And these were not the directors. These were merely the
decision and risk takers, devoted family men who were paid
one hundred thousand dollars a year and died early of
coronary attacks. Jonathan inspected their graft room, their elaborate communications room,
their restaurant, their small three bed hospital. I see the
(09:01):
hospital has its own elevator, he observed to the guard.
If a man dies at his desk, you can get
him out of the building without anybody getting so much
as a peak at him. Of the planning board doors
will slip up on the many to tell sir. And Jonathan,
in his fourth or fifty year with the company, had
had a personal encounter with a large precision technique for
just such fatalities. One day in the elevator, and engineer
(09:24):
named Jack said pale, the gasp and fallen, and while
Jonathan knelt over him, the operator had stopped the car
between floors, telephoning calmly to the starter in the lobby
for instructions, and the cage had dropped fast and deep
into the cellars, and guards with a stretcher had met it,
and Jonathan had said, I'm afraid he's dead, and the
chief guard had replied, oh no, sir, he's faint, that
(09:45):
that's all, or else he's indisposed. Ere going to get
him to a doctor, And the chief would have just
stepped back into the car, sir. That had been all
there was to it. Later, Jonathan had been unable to
pry an unequivocal answer from the elevator operator, from the guards,
or from anybody. On the obituary page of the newspaper
on the third day, there'd been a brief paragraph to
the effect that one D. M. Jack's engineer of this
(10:07):
city had passed away, but not so much as a
word had indicated that the man worked for Allied Jax
had simply disappeared. The company did not ignore death. It
bypassed it. When a man died, his assistant took his place.
In the corporation with tens of thousands of employees, somebody
was bonded I every day and work couldn't be repeatedly interrupted.
(10:31):
Back once more on his own floor, as Jonathan put
his head into Leif's handsomely decorated antewoom and said, if.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
He wants me and back, the doctor's with him now.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Said Miss Tablin to Leif's confidential secretary, But stay near
your phone please. At his desk was nothing to do
but wait and stare at the reader acceptance grafts on
the wall. Jonathan asked himself, what could be in the
wind leif was anything but impulsive. The permanent Yes, the
visit to thirteen were in themselves of promotion. Nothing lay
(11:05):
above thirteen but fourteen, since nobody had always permitted to
go up to fifteen, where the President's wheat filled the
pyramid's tip. Was he? Jonathan wondered actually to join the
planning board. He could rise no higher in the advertising
department without taking Leith's own job. Well, he would have
(11:25):
the answer soon enough, he told himself, whatever it might be.
With a shrug, he took the pass from his pocket,
scrutinized his likeness on it, and laughed. Gone, gone with
the waxen curls of youth. In reminiscent sentimental mood, he
tried to recall how he had looked at twenty seven.
He couldn't manage it. But I do remember, he said
to himself, with a smile. I do remember that I
(11:47):
was skeptical. Oh was I skeptical? He had, he remembered,
in a suspicion of the elevators, actually paced off the
corridors to make sure the lower floors of the pyramid
were broader than the upper. In fact, he had done
worse than that he had played truant from his desk
to explore the cellar's, finding, of course, nothing evil, finding
nothing at all, then, Jonathan recalled, smiling, having learned what
(12:12):
he could about the building. He had tried to discover
what Allied's products were flair for words or not. It
seemed absurd to him at first to write ads without
knowing what they were about, and he had been able
to learn a little. He had found, for example, that
the company's four thousand products bore alphabetic names ranging from
ab AaB an adulterant from milkshakes to ziz z yz,
(12:36):
which were rots for tractor magnetos. But his collection of
obs and zizz's had soon bored him. The buzzer on
his desk, tuned to G sharp, sounded with the dexterity
of practice. Jonathan lifted his telephone from its cradle and
perched it like a parakeet on his shoulder. Gerber. Here
it was Leith's secretary.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
And the doctor is still with him. His ulsters must
have been usually bad this morning, or maybe he's been hearing
the ticking again. But I have some instructions for you. Kindly,
happier lunch, make a tour of fourteen at one o'clock
and report back here at two.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
What's cooking, missus Tabline? Jonathan asked her the secretary's regard
to slang's evidence of democracy and passed the word around it.
You were adorable if you used it. A girl worked
away her fingernails in her youth for a boss who
was sufficiently adorable.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
I don't know. It must be important, though, a major project.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I eat my lunch at twelve with the junior executive group.
You know, the directors don't go out to lunch till
at quarter past one. If I go up to fourteen
while they're out, the place will be deserted. What does
he want me to do up there? Do you know?
Miss Tabline?
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Just look around? I guess I wish I was going
with you, mister Gerber. Promise me one thing, though, Promise
me when you get back, you'll tell me if mister
Waffin really has a gold plated toilet seat.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yes, yes, I will, promised Jonathan, but he knew he
wouldn't tell. He ate lunch with two of his assistants,
younger men still in their indoctrination period the grape Vine Telegraph.
He discovered to his amusement, had already tapped out the
news of his golden pass. The boys showed him scrubbed, bright,
eager faces, and arrived each time he opened his mouth
(14:17):
out of respect. Shortly after one, he rode up to
fourteen in the elevator. It was noticeably smaller than thirteen.
Evidently the stepped back was sharper than it appeared from
the street. Another guard, saluting, informed him that there were
eight directors offices and a conference room, and that he
was free to go anywhere he liked. And the guards
said they're worth seeing, sir, And they were. Several offices
(14:40):
had barber chairs, gigantic television receivers, and bars stocked with
private blends. One had a cigar humidor the size of
a bank vault, one a target range for air pistols,
one that finished saw the bath. The most interesting was
a room which duplicated the after deck of a cabin cruiser,
complete with angling chair and a rack for rods and word.
(15:01):
Not an assistant, not as secretary was to be seen,
not a memorandum as it created the rich polished wood
of the vast desks. Tell me, Jonathan said to the guard,
how often do these planning board men come in, and
the guard had replied, well, they're here for the annual meeting, sir.
Otherwise they come in only when mister Sathwaite sends for him.
(15:21):
I guess Hanscomb Ludlow's athterwait The second was Allied's president,
who had his suite in the point of the pyramid,
and a man who was photographed growing no older in
the photographs from year to year, but he was never seen.
Do any of them live in Minnesota? Forgive my curiosity,
this is my first visit. Well, sir, you're forgetting. They
(15:42):
all have planes and pilots nowadays, like mister Eppingery. Now
he's got four hundred thousand acres in Louisiana. He keeps
where they're shrimping, so he lives there. Mister Latchwell owns
an island off the coast of Mexico. He's got a
castle and a little army. That's why he wears his
red and blue uniforms and his leather boots with his
stars on him. I've seen mister Latchwell on the elevators.
Of course, Jonathan, at one time or another had glimpsed
(16:05):
most of the portly imposing directors. There was one, undoubtedly
the fisherman, who wore white canvas trousers and a white
cap with a green saluloid bill. Another went bare toad
and raw height sandals for his health. There was method
behind their little eccentricities. Of course, they put them on
as a demonstration of equality, his wise old Leaf had
(16:25):
patiently explained to him more than once. Thanking the guard,
Jonathan went down again. It's one fifty five, he said,
putting his bald head into leaf sandy room. Miss Tabline,
peering over her glasses, said, oh, come in and wait here.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Oh, oh, tell me, tell me, you must tell me.
Is it really?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Our directors work much too hard, Miss Tabline for any
such nonsense. But of course I understand you were just
having a little fun.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
Oh I I did so want to know.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Was Miss Tabline's loyalty questionable? She might just possibly say.
Jonathan to himself proved to be a dangerous fellow worker.
He read, dear folks, the Allied House organ until the
signal lamp flashed, and this Tabline said he might go in.
Good news are bad, and he scarcely saw how it
could be bad. He would have it.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Now well good afternoon, my son.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Said, al Leicester leaf. His face was as white as
a sheet of the gha the company manufactured as an
intermediate for the jenifice industry, smudged with shadow. One corner
of his mouth sagged. His left eye was an owl's pupil,
enormous and fierce. Jonathan was shocked and said, Lester, Lester,
you're ill. I'm not ill.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
I'm dying. I'll diet my est this afternoon. Robably within
the next five or ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
He let me, let me drive you home.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
No, no, I want it this way.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
I want my.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
Death as well as my life, to be a demonstration
service allied.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
And all that it stands for. Ah, but time is short,
my son.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
Tomorrow morning and inter office memo form one one for
be blue.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
He will announce that you are succeeding me as chief.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Of the department.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
You're started fifty thousand, your stock bonus will be comparable.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Thank you, Lester.
Speaker 5 (18:29):
Your your first active office, Jonathan, I hope will be
to hire and assistant to Blazes with.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Our sacred fire.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
I suggest that you you do what I did, comb
the agencies for a young Jonathan Gerber and train him
as for twenty one years I have trained you.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
It was a gray afternoon. No sunlight at all was
filtering through the glass brick. The room, it seemed to Jonathan,
was crowded with bars of fog lying one on top
of another, like two by twelve stacked in a lumber
yard in bimness, in shimmering shadow. El Lester. Leith's face
came and went an image floating free in space, bobbling
(19:15):
lazily like a barrel and a foggy sea. It's been
such a joy to serve ally that I haven't counted
the years, said Jonathan. He had learned well. Such pronouncements
were now effortless for him. But it was a bit
of a blow. Nevertheless, has it really been so long?
(19:35):
Has my son and I know I leave the.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Department in good hands?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Did you go up to thirteen? Yes? Of course, fourteen?
Of course it was it was your order. Leith swayed
with an effort. He gathered together his failing.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
Energy, and he said, before for you take over, there's
one more thing, Jonathan, one final right you you must
meet our president. Go up to fifteen.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
He sagged on his executive's posture chair. Jonathan sprang forward.
Lester never so slowly. Leith raised a white forefinger towards
the ceiling. Fifteen, he whispered, and died tenderly. Jonathan closed
(20:34):
behind him the soundproof door that was now his own.
Miss tabline, Please call the janitor, mister Leath is no
longer with allied. Down the corridor at the elevator bank,
a car appeared. The instantly pressed the button, almost as
if news of his eminence had somehow traveled down the
dark shaft along the bell wire, and he directed the
(20:56):
operator brusquely the top. The little lamps blinked, the door
slid open. But I said I wanted the top, Jonathan
protested indignantly. He was the advertising manager. He earned fifteen
thousand dollars a year. His time was too valuable the
allied for him to permit a menual to waste it.
(21:17):
He said, this is fourteen, not fifteen. The operator said, sorry, sir,
this is as high as we will go. Speak to
the guard I will. Indeed, the guard was already at
his elbow, the same chap who had conducted him earlier.
What is this? What is this? I want? Fifteen? Dammit?
Oh quite quite right, sir. Over Here he led the
(21:39):
way to a plain bronze door with neither knob nor keyhole.
Just drop your pass into the slot, sir. It operates
an electrical circuit and opens the door. You do the
same thing on the other side when you come down.
You mean to say, mister Sathwaite walks this last flight
each time he comes here. Ah, well, I've never seen him, sir.
He must from coast to coast. Hundreds of Allied plants
(22:02):
were a hundred and ninety three thousand Allied fellow workers
were turning out four thousand products. Here at the center
of the country sat this colossal pyramid, which was the
center of the whole thing. Here on the topmost floor,
the pyramid clicked the mind, which, in its genius comprehended
and guided all. And here here was he, Jonathan Gerber,
(22:25):
about to shake the hand of supremacy. Eyes a light
shoulder squared, Jonathan dropped his pass into the thin slot,
walked through the door, and shut it after him. Facing
him was a simple staircase of painted steel with a
hand rail, climbing it past rough walls of orange hollow
(22:45):
tile which had not been plastered. He marveled, how fitting
that mister Satherway with his immeasurable power, should despise its trappings.
Many and many a time. In his writings, Jonathan had
said that Allied's president War was a simple man, and
as always, the fiction had created the fact. He was
(23:06):
at the top of the staircase. He stepped on to
a bare concrete floor, littered with scraps of building paper,
pots of dried paint, and dead flies. The air smelt
like a stilton cheese. Trying the door at his left,
he peered into a black cavern in which greased steel
elevator cables slipped over great spoked wheels. He tried a
(23:27):
door at his right, and gazed into another cavern exactly
like it for five minutes. For ten he stood in
the musty heat, turning slowly round and round, looking for
He knew not what a secret door, a cache of
blackboard on which his predecessors might have left, if nothing more,
at least their signatures. But he saw only the paint pots,
(23:51):
the flies, and four small windows, like round eyes, one
on each inward sloping wall. Cobwebs and grime covered the
windows here and there on them he saw the scurf
had been rubbed away as by a sleeved elbow. Stepping
to the nearest, he broadened the clear spot on it
and looked out. He saw a segment of the town
(24:13):
which might have been a ramshackle clutter of blackened boards,
and beyond that the endless plain of Minnesota. And he
saw something he had forgotten. That it was winter on
the prairie. Dry snow driven by the wind, smoked over
farm houses and fences. Where the land could be seen
at all, it was blue with cold, and more snow
(24:34):
was coming, and more cold. For it was true that
summer was a vacation and interlude. Winter was the reality,
the constant companion Winter lay, ever, a few miles to
the north, waiting to reclaim its property. Blue lay the earth,
veined with white like the deep sea, and the veins
(24:54):
were ice. Jonathan murmured and shivered, soap cold, so cold,
and slapping the dust from his warm, fuzzy tweed suit.
He summoned his raiment for his face, awe and dedication
in the proper proportions, and tramped down the staircase, his
heels ringing on the painted steel, bits of plastered, grittiest
(25:18):
sand beneath his soul, his hand all the way cherished
the safety rail, he warned himself cautiously. This would be
no time to slip and fall. No, no, I mustn't
slip now ah. The title of that story is The
(25:57):
Cot written by George Sumner Elber. It appeared in the
August nineteen sixty two edition of the Magazine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction. This is Michael Hanson speaking technical production
on mindwebs by Steve Gordon. Mindwebbs comes to you from
WYCHA Radio in Madison, a service of the University of
(26:17):
Wisconsin Extension
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